Taking Back Yesterday
by GaggedCenobite
Summary: An exercise in getting rid of unwanted tenants.  Is it worth it to plan, organize, and execute a full-on assault on the biggest arms dealer in Citadel space, just to get some alone-time?  You bet your ass it is.  Jack/Thane.
1. Prologue

Mass Effect is the property of Bioware.

**A/N: **I can't believe I'm doing this, holy hell.

Okay, so. At the conclusion of Rock Steady, a couple people inquired about the possibility of sequel material. This is...not a sequel, per se—I want to wait until Mass Effect 3, in the interest of having some actual canon to go off. However, it _is_ sort of a...sidestory...type...thing taking place after Rock Steady. Basically a small chunk of plot resolving some loose ends from the main story (ha ha, I say "small" and yet you and I both know I'm going to get started and before long it'll be as long as RS was. God damn it).

When Kasumi was released as DLC, I was already about halfway done with the story proper, and it wasn't exactly possible to retroactively throw her in the Normandy's crew; as such, she ended up holding an outside role for a few chapters, more of a guest star thing. I really like the character, though, hence the premise of this story (seriously, if it were possible to have three slots under the "character" tab, Kasumi would have the third). Expect it to be about the same rate of updates, as I'm working on my PhD now, so there's going to be a lot of stuff that takes priority, haha.

I'm going to shut up now and stop boring you with my rambling; as a final note, you may wish to read Rock Steady before this, if you haven't already. (It's not essential, but it will help.) Thank you, and enjoy.

* * *

"...and I kind of need to be hiding until it blows over, soooo...can I stay with you two for a while?"

When you were on your own in the Terminus, you tended to figure out how to read people and situations very quickly if you wanted to survive. You figured out when people were outright lying to you and when they weren't quite telling the whole truth, maybe massaging it just a little to make themselves look better for you. Generally, the time when you wanted to exercise this ability was when they were asking for favors, because it was then that they'd really be out to make you feel comfortable about them. After spending enough time exercising this ability, you'd develop sort of a sixth sense for truth-stretching, an innate bullshit detector. You could tell when people were making offers that were not nearly as innocuous as they sounded.

Right now, Subject Zero, mass murderer, world class biotic, and all-around badass, was one hundred percent convinced that this was one of those offers.

"Here?" she asked, actually taken aback for a moment. "Um. Abso-fuckin'-_lutely_ n—"

"Of course you can." The interruption came from Thane Krios, assassin extraordinaire and her current housemate and...er...well, it was complicated. Occasionally Jack tried to come up with a word for exactly what the drell was to her; she generally stumbled over a variety of terms with disturbingly far-reaching implications ('paramour', 'lover', 'boyfriend', etc), but at this particular moment she was quite willing to settle on 'ball and chain', given how he was reacting. "You've been perfectly agreeable in our past dealings; I don't see any reason not to help you for a few days while you're down on your luck."

"_Krios_." That was the 'you are going down a road that will end in tears and biotically-enhanced punches to the mouth' tone of voice.

Thane was about as affected by her attempt at intimidation as a thresher maw under small-arms fire, of course; he was an unflappably ice-cold operator when he needed to be (something Jack found pretty damned hot, but it made it difficult to win arguments with him, and for someone who liked winning as much as Jack did, it was maddening). "Why don't you come into the kitchen? I'll make tea for the three of us."

He was addressing the third column of their conversation, who was currently perched on the sofa, on the other side of his Nos Astra apartment's living room: Kasumi Goto, master thief and one-time collaborator of the pair. Apparently in need of a place to stay, she had more or less ambushed both of them as they entered the apartment and (after a few guns were hastily drawn) explained her purpose in being there and made her request.

"Thanks," she exclaimed, both gratitude and relief evident in her voice. "Tea would be nice, after the last couple days..." A small, hopeful smile formed under her black hood as she followed Thane out of the room.

As far as people went, Jack didn't find Kasumi particularly offensive. (Admittedly, part of this was due to having only been around her for an hour or two, total.) She was...annoyingly cheerful at times, and she almost constantly spoke in a playful, sing-song 'I know something you don't know' kind of way, certainly. With that said, she'd done Thane a good turn by helping him get into Elias Kelham's penthouse, so that was a point in her favor. Plus she was _really _laid-back—smoother than Mannovai shishah smoked through ice water—and easy to work with, which was a plus on its own.

With that said, the problem with having Kasumi stay with them at the moment was, admittedly, a selfish one. After several months of shooting Collectors, mercs, and husks, months of surviving exploding buildings, swarms of ravenous alien bees, and lectures from Miranda Lawson, Jack and Thane had _finally_ gotten a chance to settle down and live out what time they had left together in happy, content peace. And now, literally within ten seconds of them stepping through the apartment's front door, a tiny (seriously, even Jack had a few inches on her), hooded kleptomaniac was right in the midst of it, blowing their 'vacation' all to hell.

The convict sighed. She wanted Thane, and she wanted him _bad_, like a volus wanted stock exchange reports. And it wasn't like she hadn't tried to delay gratification—they'd agreed that getting through the mission took priority over any kind of entanglements, all the better to focus totally on each other later. (The decision to wait until she was sure it was what she wanted had been a respectful gesture on the drell's part, of a sort Jack was totally unaccustomed to. If anything, it drew her to him more: people still treated each other this well? She wouldn't have believed it if she hadn't seen it.) With that said, the mission was over, and as much as she tried not to consider how Thane was living on borrowed time, Jack was determined to savor every moment of what they had left, and it was going to be very difficult to do that with Kasumi bouncing around the apartment constantly.

"I...well, I guess I let my emotions get in the way of my professionalism," the thief was saying as Jack entered the kitchen. "I didn't really plan, I just...I went to the party, and I tried to find a way into the vault, but the security was too good. I wasn't thinking straight; I should've cased the place first, done the research before I tried to play with that kind of high stakes, but..." Kasumi seemed uncharacteristically sober; she didn't look at Thane as he prepared the tea, but instead rested her face in her hands, staring down at the dinner table's surface. "...Oh, Keiji."

Jack took the opportunity to glance around the room. Thane's kitchen was as characteristically spartan as she had expected, although one decoration did stand out: a holo-painting, next to the window, of a landscape. Specifically, a desert at night, stretching out as far as the eye could see. Slightly left of the center, a massive stone ziggurat rested atop the dunes, its stairs bordering the full moon in the sky. It was a very Thane kind of painting, she mused.

The drell in question returned to the table, politely pulling out a chair for Jack before he sat down and distributed three mugs of tea. "Ms. Goto has acquainted me with the details of her situation," he informed Jack, and paused to take a long sip from his drink, causing his dewlap to ripple and flex with the swallowing motion. "Her business partner has recently been killed in action, and she's interested in recovering his graybox, in the interest of giving him a proper service." Thane set the mug down and steepled his fingers. "Unfortunately, the graybox is currently being held by a Mr. Donovan Hock, which..._complicates_ the issue of retrieval."

The mention of Donovan Hock drew a grimace from the biotic. "Hock? Kind of a big fish you're fuckin' with, Goto; Hock's old money from Earth and he's connected like you wouldn't believe."

"So I've learned," Kasumi answered ruefully. She sipped at the tea, and her face immediately scrunched up (at least the part that was visible under the hood); Jack made a mental note to prepare for extreme bitterness upon drinking from her mug. "And now he knows who I am and what I've done."

Carefully, Jack lifted the mug to her lips and took a sip of the tea, bracing herself for the worst. Ha, it wasn't that bad. To think she'd been concerned about looking awkward in front of—

"That means it'll be twice as difficult for us to get close to him."

She choked on the tea.

Thane blinked with concern as Jack coughed and clutched the table's edge. "_Siha_, are you all right? Does the tea disagree with you, or—"

"Wha, wait, what do you mean, _us_?" Jack sputtered through a fit of coughing. It took her a second to calm down, but she didn't really wait to be articulate before glaring at Kasumi. "When did Thane and I volunteer to help you try to shake down a guy with more money than God? Staying here's one thing, Goto, but we're not doing your goddamn dirty work."

Kasumi winced at the vitriol in the biotic's voice, but even if she was going to mount a defense of herself (which didn't seem likely, given how cowed she looked), Thane spoke up first. "Jack, that's enough. It shouldn't take more than a week, at most. I don't see why we can't help Ms. Goto, seeing as how she's dealt fairly with us in the past."

"Damn it, Thane!" She hadn't realized quite how angry she was until she found herself standing, one fist jarring the table with its impact. All three mugs jumped in place, nearly sloshing their contents onto the tabletop. "What the fuck, seriously? This was supposed to be _our_ time. _Ours_. Last I checked, we didn't spend the last month getting our ass shot off by Collectors just so we could spend our retirement trying to steal a damn graybox."

"I can explain," Kasumi began, but that was apparently not going to fly, as a second later a biotic field had lifted her bodily from her chair with a yelp. The next thing she knew, she was being rapidly towed from the kitchen by a familiar, tattooed arm. "Wha—what are you doing? Let go! At least hear me out!"

Her protestations had done basically nothing to deter Jack, who was in the midst of carrying the thief to the door under one arm (the great thing about biotics was that they made lifting things infinitely easier). "Uh, nope, sorry. We've kinda got some things of our own that we're focusing on at the moment, so if you'd kindly _fuck off_, that'd be great." She was _not_ going to have her hard-earned free time interrupted; there were only a few months of it available to her, and spending them getting shot at by a legion of private security in the interest of finding a dead man's memories was not on her priority list.

She could hear Thane behind her, his voiced filled with concern. "_Siha_..." _Oh no you don't, Krios, you don't get to be a bleeding fuckin' heart this time._ "Try to reconsider before you do someth—"

"_Please!_" Kasumi begged, clinging to the convict's waist with both arms. Despite the biotic field, she was doing a fairly successful job at encumbering Jack's movements and making herself difficult to drag through the air. "Don't throw me out! I wouldn't have bothered you, but they're looking for me—all of my safehouses are being watched, and...and I don't have anywhere else to go." To Jack's disquiet, she looked to be on the verge of tears—a jarring departure from her normal blasé cheer. "Look, all I need is somewhere to stay for a few days, until I can figure out how to get the graybox back. You don't have to help with the heist, letting me plan here will be fine. Jack, I have to get it, it's all I've got left of him. I'll be out of your way once I get the box, just...please, let me do this first. Please."

Looking down at the thief's pitiful state, Jack was surprised by a flash of insight, and the slow trickle of something she had not experienced in as long as she could remember: empathy.

When she compared their situations, there wasn't much to indicate that she wouldn't be the same way in a few months. Bereaved. Collateral damage from a life cut way too short. Desperately seeking any kind of memory she could hold on to, anything that would remind her of those better days. In light of that, Kasumi's distress was a knife in the heart—and to Jack's begrudging annoyance, she found she understood how the other woman was feeling, and doubted she would react any better than Kasumi had.

"...Fine."

She felt a defeated sigh escape her lips; half a year ago she wouldn't have been nearly soft enough to give in. Releasing the thief, Jack dropped the biotic field and stepped back. "Only until you get the box back, and then you're gone."

Kasumi scrambled back to her feet, a renewed brightness in her eyes. "Thank you!" Unexpectedly, she pulled Jack into what probably qualified for the Galactic Book of Records 'most awkward hug ever' category. "Thank you so much...I promise you won't regret it." Jack, not being used at all to this kind of situation, was uncomfortably shifting in Kasumi's arms when she glanced over the thief's shoulder and saw possibly the most disconcerting look Thane had ever given her. It was...very _knowing_, for lack of a better word, and she could swear there was a hint of a smirk on his-

-Oh. Oh god.

Was this what being _good_ felt like?

_Fuuuuuuuuuck._

_

* * *

_

"Can't believe I agreed to this."

It was later in the night, and as Kasumi curled up on the couch in the living room, Jack found herself studying her reflection in Thane's bedroom mirror. With her harness draped around her neck, she examined the curves and angles of her naked torso, checking for any new scars she might have picked up from the fiasco in the Collector base. Thankfully, it seemed as if her ink would go unmarred another day.

"It's our duty to leave the galaxy a better place than we found it, _siha_," Thane admonished, coming back from the closet and settling down on one side of his bed. He, too, was shirtless, to Jack's _immense_ glee, and she unabashedly ogled his sleek, smooth-scaled musculature in the mirror. "Besides, you saw how dismayed she was. That graybox is hers by right; no one deserves to be denied the memories of those they held dear."

"Mm." She tossed the harness aside, crossing the room and climbing onto the side opposite Thane. Getting the riot boots off was a chore as always, but she'd manage shortly. "I got the impression...maybe I'm wrong, but from the way she reacted I'm guessing they were a lot more than partners. A lot of times, you operate with somebody that close to you all the time, you kinda fall in together—hell, sometimes it's even serious." That particular talking point was...not really one she cared to think back on. It would be nice if their final months together weren't constantly dominated by thoughts of loss.

The boots clunked onto the floor (perhaps a bit more loudly than intended, but they were heavy as hell), and Jack took the opportunity to lay back and rest her head on her pillow. "Think I'm right?"

"I do," the assassin conceded. "I have to confess that I was largely motivated to help her because of that." He stretched out, resting his arms under his head, and stared up at the ceiling. "It's a lonely road she's going down, and it would be remiss of me not to do what I can to help her through it, even now."

She didn't need to ask to know Thane was referring to the loss of his wife. He'd said it was his fault, back when they met with Kolyat, but apart from that, Jack didn't really know much about the circumstances surrounding her death, or indeed about the woman herself. It was obvious he took loss better than she did...which admittedly hadn't been a problem for the last few years, up until now.

Against her better judgment, she decided to pry. "Do you...think about her often?"

Thane shifted in place, pursing his lips and apparently thinking of how best to respond. Finally: "Not as much as I once did. Particularly these days, I prefer to think of her less as a symbol of my failure...doing so would be disrespectful to her memory. Rather, I reflect fondly on the time we spent together, but try not to let it rule my life." There was probably a message in there somewhere; Jack nonetheless refrained from thinking or commenting on it. They'd already had the Mortality Discussion, as her mind termed it, several days prior while waiting for that fateful trip through the Omega-4 Relay, and although she'd swallowed the bitter pill of inevitability once, she wasn't particularly eager to repeat the experience this soon.

Her silence must have drawn Thane's concern. "Are you upset with me, _siha_?"

A sigh escaped Jack, despite her attempts at maintaining a respectable poker face. "Yeah, a little," she admitted, rolling onto her side and resting her head gingerly on Thane's chest. "...Sorry I bitched you out in front of Goto, it's just...well, I guess you know what it is." Shit, his heart was beating so _fast_. She couldn't tell if this was normal for drell or if, in the advanced stages of Kepral's, Thane's systems were having to work overtime just to keep him going. "If you think we should help her, we can do it. It's your apartment, after all."

"I think we should, yes." His fingertips brushed lightly over her closely-cropped scalp, and she felt, rather than heard, his words, given the way his chest thrummed under her. "It's the right thing to do. Besides, I think it might be good for you to make a friend." There was definitely a hint of amusement in his low, throaty voice.

Jack snickered, despite herself. "Oh, now it's advice on my social life. Fucker."

"Merely calling it as I see it, _siha_."

"You've got a real mouth on you tonight," she mock-growled, turning her head and sidling up to Thane just enough to press her forehead against his. Their eyes met, an exchange of defiant stares. "Keep running it and I might have to put it to some use."

"Normally, I'd love to," Thane agreed, pilfering a kiss. "Unfortunately, Kasumi's ten feet away from the door."

"...So? She can listen; I don't mind."

"_Jack_..." He looked amused in spite of his attempts to be severe, which Jack counted as a victory for her. "If she's recently suffered the kind of loss that we both suspect, that would only distress her further. I know it's frustrating, but we should be considerate."

With a huff that was perhaps a touch overdramatic, Jack settled back in at Thane's side, languidly draping an arm over him and leaning her head onto his shoulder. "Mrgh. So what's the plan, then? Ask her if she's got any ideas in the morning?"

Thane shifted, working an arm around her shoulders and back. "That's right. We'll come up with a plan based on whatever information she has, and see where we can go from there."

"Mmm."

A few minutes went by in silence, and then... "Hey. Thane."

"Yes?"

"What we talked about, back before the Collector Base..." Jack swallowed, trying futilely to ease the dryness of her mouth. "I meant it. I'm glad that things turned out like this, even if it doesn't go the way I want all the time."

Thane's hand squeezed hers lightly. "Thank you, _siha_. I am as well."

She drifted off to sleep in the assassin's arms, and for once, Jack's rest was content and uninterrupted.


	2. Hunting High and Low

Mass Effect is the property of Bioware.

* * *

Morning peeked its way in through the window filters, gently nudging Jack into a waking state. One which she received by sitting up sharply and glancing around in a panicky state of alert.

Okay, she wasn't on her cot in the Normandy—what the hell, why was there a window? Where...

"...Oh," she breathed. That was it, she was in Thane's apartment. So strange, how the last few months had conditioned her expectations. Where was the drell, though? He certainly wasn't in the room (although his side of the bed was warm, meaning he'd been here until recently), and she couldn't hear the shower running. Jack rolled over blearily, rubbing at her eyes, and discovered a datapad on the nightstand, the input cursor still blinking at the bottom.

_Siha,_

_With my return to Illium, there are a few people I need to see. I'll be absent until this afternoon taking care of some loose ends. Please try to help Kasumi with her preparations. I know the two of you have difficulties meshing, but remember what we talked about—she's going through a difficult time._

_I will return this afternoon. Take care._

_-Thane_

...Huh. Well, there it was, the sonuvabitch had left her stranded with Goto for the day.

She couldn't exactly be angry with him; it made sense that he'd have stuff to do, at least. Still, that didn't stop Jack from being at least a little annoyed. The tiny part of her mind that still knew how to delay gratification had to work overtime reminding her: _just one more week_. (Granted, if a week passed and Kasumi wasn't out of the apartment by then, she'd likely end up leveling most of Nos Astra with a singularity. Frustration was not something Jack endured patiently.) In the scheme of things, another week wouldn't sound so bad ordinarily, but considering they had half a year at most left, every wasted moment felt like a lost opportunity.

Nonetheless, Thane wanted her to cooperate with Kasumi, so cooperating with Kasumi was the order of the day, so to speak. Jack stretched her back and stepped into the shower, eager to get done with whatever errands the other human wanted to run. With a little luck, they could get this raid on Donovan Hock's place out of the way within the week, and then everything would be right as red sand.

The shower was warmer than the ones on the Normandy, probably due to being from a municipal water supply rather than a ship's limited supply (which meant it wasn't quite as heavily recycled, either. After a few months in the places Jack had been, bathing in water you'd technically pissed in a week ago wasn't _that_ horrible, but that didn't mean it was pleasant either). Although the warmth was certainly enjoyed, the biotic tended to eat, sleep, and shower quickly as a matter of habit (necessary for survival in the Terminus, after all), and wasted no time lingering under the soothing cone of water.

...Okay, maybe a _little_ time.

To her total lack of surprise, a quick trip out of the bedroom revealed a hooded shadow lurking in the kitchen. "Oh hi, Jack," Kasumi chirped. "You just missed Thane by about ten minutes. He said he had some stuff to take care of, but that he'd—"

"Yeah, he let me know," Jack broke in, not particularly interested in being barraged with high-pitched noises this early in the morning. She sat down at Thane's table, snagging a container of some sort of nebulous juice and drinking straight out of it (which drew a dismayed frown from the thief). "So what're you after today? I'm guessing you've at least got a plan."

Kasumi nodded. "Naturally. There's an information broker in Nos Astra that I've done business with before. I thought it would be best to see what I can get out of her before we take another shot at Hock's penthouse."

Information brokers. Fantastic.

Over the course of her criminal career, Jack had occasionally needed to deal with information brokers. As a rule, they were universally backstabbing sons of bitches, always after something—your credits, your loyalty, your _dignity_—and then when they got it, their next step was usually to shoot you in the back of the head and throw your body in the local incinerator. She'd lost a damn good running crew to a smarmy volus on Korlus once, a double-dealing snake who had milked their gullible leader for every credit he could get and then set the Blue Suns on them once they'd run out. Jack shook her head; her biotic abilities had been the only thing that got her out of that one.

Still, it was Kasumi's heist so what Kasumi wanted, went. "Thane wants me to hold your hand so you don't get your ass shot off out there." With a refreshed sigh, the convict set the juice back down and swiped at her lips with the back of a hand. "Lemme know when you're ready to go."

"Oh." Although Kasumi tried to keep her expression neutral, there was definitely a bit of a concerned moue going on there. "Um...no offense or anything, but please don't start a fight. I need the broker to cooperate with me. She's the best in Illium; I can't afford to scare her off."

Jack rolled her eyes. "It's _fine_, Goto. Stop worrying; I'm not gonna fuckin' shoot her or anything."

* * *

An hour later, she was having significant difficulties not shooting Liara T'Soni.

It wasn't totally the asari's fault, to be fair. The locale had gone a ways towards worsening Jack's mood, as they'd had to dodge around a group of elcor moving furniture out of Liara's office. Her executive assistant, an orange-faced drell, had explained that they were in the midst of relocating and apologized for the inconvenience. Fortunately there was still a chair in front of the desk (which Jack immediately took, leaving Kasumi to stand and work out her nervous energy with pacing).

With that said, there was still plenty to be disliked about the broker herself, as far as Jack was concerned. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but there was something that struck her as vaguely fake about Liara. Almost a vibe of overcompensating, of trying too hard to make up for an obvious lack of confidence. Jack couldn't help but wonder how the asari had lasted this long—in this kind of business, if you didn't radiate "don't fuck with me" in some way, you usually got _eaten_.

"I've recently come into some good luck," Liara was in the midst of explaining. "It will take a few weeks for me to be able to take advantage of my new resources...there's just so much to go through, and I still don't have a handle on the sheer scope of it. However, I'm certain that I can get whatever you need on Hock without much trouble."

Despite the relaxing atmosphere of the mostly-bare office, Kasumi was visibly stressed out. She couldn't seem to pass more than thirty seconds without wringing her hands, and most of her typical cheer seemed to have been abandoned in favor of lip-biting pensiveness. "Thanks," she answered, fiddling with her hood. "If you want to go above the usual rate for this one, I'll understand. It's a lot to track down and process, after all."

The asari shook her head. "I don't think that will be necessary. You've been a useful asset in the past, and I see no reason to gouge you on pricing now." There was a pause while she typed at a haptic keyboard, accessing some kind of data on her terminal. "...So you'll be looking for the standard, then? Floor plans, access codes, security details—that would include automated providers, anti-intrusion measures, and any kind of security personnel."

At the rate she was pacing, it was pretty damned likely that Kasumi would wear a hole in the office's carpeting before their meeting was through. "I've got the floor plans...the official ones, at least," she mused out loud. "I've tried this once before already, after all. But the kind of thing we'd be looking for isn't always on the records. Maybe if we got in touch with the architect who designed that penthouse, we could find out if there are any secret passages, escape routes, panic room...anything that could lead us into the vault."

"That's not a bad suggestion," Liara agreed, leaning back in her chair and steepling her fingers thoughtfully. "It's not uncommon for men in Hock's position to take that kind of precaution, and I'm familiar enough with the architect...Zandrel, if I remember correctly. An elcor. He could be persuaded to give up any 'unofficial' additions to the penthouse, for the right price." She cocked her head to the right, in a motion likely intended to be reminiscent of a self-confident batarian (and coming off more reminiscent of a puzzled kitten). "If there _ aren't _ any such passages...you're going to need a backup plan."

Jack, for her part, was wondering why the hell she was even here. Sending Thane along with Kasumi would've made more sense; like their thieving housemate, he had done business with Liara in the past, and he would have been a better choice for this little intel-gathering run. Better yet, they could've sent Kasumi by herself, and then she and Thane could have hit the bars, dusted up...wait, did he dust? She wasn't sure—she'd have to ask. Probably not, but it never hurt to check, and she _did_ have some red sand lying around.

"If you really need a plan B, why don't we just shoot our way in there?" she spoke up, startling both the thief and the broker. "I mean, I don't know how _you_ are in a fight, Goto.."

"Depends on how fair the fight is," Kasumi broke in, a familiar twinkle flashing in her eyes.

"...but Thane can handle himself well enough with a little prep time," Jack continued, determined to finish the sentence, "and I'm pretty much a walking Category 5. We could probably handle most of his security between the three of us...maybe get some affordable mercs, if you wanna hedge your bets."

"Hmm." Shifting in place, Liara thought the idea over. "That's a possibility. I'll pass along some contacts for you, then. Venom, Eclipse, Magis Ascendance, and Embodiment all have representatives in Nos Astra at the moment, although I'd recommend against hiring Eclipse, seeing as how Hock's currently paying them to guard his estate."

"It's worth a try." Kasumi was looking a little twitchier than usual, having apparently built up a lot of nervous energy during the planning process. She fiddled with her hood, shifting from foot to foot, and finally sighed. "...I think I need a smoke. Be back in a few." She hurried by Jack's chair, exiting the office with a rather disquieting haste; Jack, watching her go, decided she preferred the thief's company more when she wasn't freshly grieving and stressed as all hell.

That left her alone in the office with Liara T'Soni as the door hissed shut.

"So, Jack," Liara began after a few seconds of awkward quiet. "I understand you served with Command Shepard during his last mission."

Jack folded her arms, locking eyes with the asari. Her poker face had never been particularly great, but dating Thane Krios tended to do wonders for one's ability to read, and therefore mimic, total deadpan. "...'sright." No need to give her anything more than absolutely necessary. The sooner they were done with all this bullshit with Donovan Hock, the better—dragging personal issues into it would only make things worse.

"How is he holding up? He insisted he was fine when I saw him yesterday, but I'm well-acquainted with the Commander's habits of bottling up his stress."

"Ah, you know Shepard." The convict shrugged. "Still asking people all kinds of shit about their feelings, still dumb as a pyjack, and still way too well-meaning for his own good." She grinned fondly. "Hell of a CO, though. It was a good mission."

To Jack's complete lack of surprise, Liara did not take the joke well. She leaned forward, giving this kind of...squinty...glare...ahahahaha, it was _adorable_, in its own way. Just like a kitten, trying to play at being a tiger—she'd been right in her estimation earlier; Liara was in way over her head and trying to put on the hardass front to make up for it. Still, it was important for her to make nice with the broker, in the interest of getting the mission accomplished (and therefore, in the interest of getting Kasumi out of their apartment...and therefore therefore, in the interest of _finally_ getting to settle down and relax like she and Thane deserved). For this reason, she would not take a shot at Liara.

...Oh god, the temptation. She would not take a shot at Liara. She would not take a shot at Liara. She would _not_ take a shot at Liara.

"You shouldn't speak that way about him," the asari growled, low in her throat. "Commander Shepard is one of the bravest, warmest, most caring human beings I've ever known, and if you think—"

Okay, just one shot. "Still trying to fuck the quarian, too, last I saw."

She had the satisfaction of seeing Liara's eyebrows rocket into the top of her forehead. "I...wha...but..." A second later, her blue skin flushed a furious violet, and she made a show of looking back down at the datapad in her hand, stammers giving way to a heavy silence.

Jack grinned, putting her boots up on the desk. _Worth it_.

* * *

"Well...I've got good news and bad news."

This was not something people generally wanted to hear from their primary care physician, but as far as Thane was concerned, he didn't have much left in the way of 'bad news' to hear. Whatever it was, it couldn't be _that_ bad. He sat back a bit on the examination table, casting a calm eye on the batarian in front of him. "Let's hear the bad news first, Doctor."

Often, when one has had an opportunity to build up a set of stereotypes about certain types of people, one tends to stumble across somebody who totally ruins their paradigm. Alek Rand'Sanal, one of the only three cardiopulmonologists on Illium, was more or less everything Thane expected batarians not to be: empathetic, mild-mannered, and generally bent on helping others. They'd had a solid working relationship for the entire time the drell had lived on Illium, and although Doctors Chakwas and Solus had been splendid during the months Thane had spent on the Normandy, it felt good to be working with Rand'Sanal again. He had a certain affable charm that made the delivery of 'you have a terminal illness' sting just a little less.

Case in point: "I don't think you'll be qualifying for the Tayseri 5km Marathon this year."

Thane chuckled, despite himself. "Unfortunate. I was certain that this was my year to shine."

The slender batarian grinned in turn; his top set of eyes focused on Thane while his bottom pair scanned the datapad in his hands. "To be serious, though," he continued, sobering a bit, "I'd say you're progressing on schedule, as far as our last appointment goes. You're at...42% capacity, I'd say; your left lung's going to collapse within the next two to three months, I think. It's metastasized to your stomach, and the scans picked up traces in your heart and liver."

This was not an unexpected development. He'd more or less expected something along these lines. As such, Thane took the news with calm acceptance. "That's more or less what I expected. The good news, then?"

"It's going much more slowly than it could," Rand'Sanal answered, setting the datapad down. "You're in spectacular shape for a man of your age, and it's obvious you've been up and about for the past few months. Keep up the exercise, and you'll make it farther than most with Kepral's do. On top of that, those traces in your liver and heart are barely there."

"What kind of time frame would you say we're looking at, Doctor?"

"Realistically speaking?" Rand'Sanal pursed his lips. "Seven months, maybe eight if things go well."

The assassin smiled. "Thank you. That's...more than I had dared to hope for."

"Likewise." Moving over to the examination table, the doctor rested a hand on Thane's shoulder. "There was something else I wanted to discuss with you, Mr. Krios, if you'll let me."

"Of course."

There was an uncharacteristically sober look in all four of Dr. Rand'Sanal's eyes as he began. "A year ago, we talked about getting you a transplant. Now, I know you declined my offer to get on the waiting list last time..."

"I did," Thane responded. "There are other drell, less far along and much more deserving, who could make use of those lungs."

"I'm just saying, you're still in good enough condition to get a new set of lungs," Rand'Sanal explained patiently. His numerous nostrils flared slightly, in keeping with the grave shift in his expression. "If the surgery's successful, we could be looking at a real lease on life. The only significant metastasis is in your stomach, and that could be treated individually—your body's stopped responding to the cipoxicin, but I'll get you started on andromycin to keep it from spreading."

He took a breath.

"Mr. Krios...you could have _years_ left if you went through with this. Enough time to wait for something more permanent to be developed, at least. It's not a certain thing, of course, but you should be familiar with working against the odds. I'm not going to order you to take a certain course of action, of course, but..I just want you to think about it. If the organs aren't an issue...isn't there something, or _someone_, out there that you'd like to spend more time with?"

Thane was silent. For a long, agonizing moment, the only sound in the examination room was the humming of an overhead light with a faulty connection. Dr. Rand'Sanal stepped back, studied his expression, and ruled against giving up for the moment—the assassin was clearly giving this some internal debate.

At long last, he looked up to meet the batarian's bottom pair of eyes. "I think...I'd be willing to give it further consideration."

* * *

"...so then I kicked him in the head until he was dead," Jack finished, punching her fist into a palm. "It was fuckin' great, brains and teeth and skull everywhere. He had it coming, too, after what he did. None of the assholes in that district got in my way again after that...I could've run the place if I wanted. Being a warlord wasn't really my style, though—too much planning and shit, not enough killing—and I wasn't about to suck up to Aria like the rest of them. So I moved on."

On the other side of the desk, Kasumi was white as a sheet, and even Liara looked a bit nonplussed. "That...actually explains a lot about what happened to the Talons," the asari said. "I'll have to update my files."

"Yeah, that was it for them." The convict smirked. "Thought they could double-deal me on the hallex and shoot me in the back when I complained about it. Fuck 'em."

Kasumi had just enough time to try steering the conversation back on track with "So, um, about Hock..." before the door slid open with a _whoosh_, revealing a pair of drell—the one who'd been manning the desk outside, and Thane.

"Good afternoon," the assassin said, stepping into the office. "Apologies for my lateness; there was some personal business I needed to deal with."

Jack hopped up from the chair and cuffed Thane on the shoulder as he approached. "There you are," she grinned, leaning on him. "Was wondering if you'd skipped town on me after yesterday." The jab was rewarded with an amused smile from the drell, who slid an arm around her shoulders (to the interest of Liara, who was likely making another mental note to add to her database).

"You should be so fortunate, _siha_. Have you acquired whatever information you were after?"

"Most of it, yeah," replied Kasumi, answering in Jack's place (probably a wise move). "Dr. T'Soni was able to get us some details on the penthouse, and more are forthcoming once she gets a chance to dig around some." She looked a little happier than she had at the beginning of the meeting—it was progress, at least.

Liara steepled her fingers, leaning forward on the desk. "Naturally. Anything pertinent will be forwarded to your inbox, Ms. Goto. Once I've settled into my new accommodations, I believe I'll have access to more than you could possibly dream of with regards to Mr. Hock. Of course, that's assuming I ever get settled in." She chuckled. "It's taken all day and the databanks have only recently been disconnected from the network."

"Speaking of which, they're separated and set up in the docking bay," the drell...secretary? whatever he was (Jack preferred secretary; it was kind of hilarious and definitely gave her some ideas for roleplaying with Thane at some point) spoke up. "I called ahead and got the shuttles prepped and ready as well, since most of the databank cores are ready to be moved. Hope you don't mind." A small ball of white haptic displays buzzed around his form, coming to a halt over his shoulder.

"Ah, I don't mind at all. Thank you, Feron; we're almost finished here, so when you're ready to-" Liara blinked. "...Why is the drone here?"

"Oh, that. Shepard gave me a couple extra VI modules from the Normandy so we could access the drone while off the ship. Said he didn't need them anymore."

"Good of him," Kasumi mused. "Those are expensive."

Feron folded his arms, a sullen pall coloring his expression. "I'm not as grateful as I could be. He did something to the VI firmware and uploaded-"

With a whirr, the drone projected an image onto the drell's shoulder: humanoid, and oddly familiar (Jack could swear she knew that goofy thumbs-up motion from someone in particular). As the image's features became progressively more defined, it became instantly recognizable as...

"I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite information broker in the Terminus."

The silence in the room was practically audible. Thane raised a hand to his forehead, kneading just above his eyes.

"..._Mouse_," he groaned.


	3. Witching Hour

Mass Effect is the property of Bioware.

* * *

Jack began her evening in a bar, with a drell; despite this, the evening still sucked, because it was 1) not her bar, and 2) not her drell.

That should not be construed as meaning she _owned_ a bar in some capacity, mind you, only that she had a distinct fondness for one. Specifically, it was a hole in the wall on Omega called 'Dust Or Die' (a name she'd always appreciated), where the red sand flowed like glitter at a Primacy parade and you stood at least as much chance of scoring as you did of walking out sandblasted with a fresh set of gunshot wounds. It was a place of extreme highs and lows, and on the whole, greatly outranked the Nos Astra dive she was in at the moment, which rejoiced in the dubious name of 'Audacity'. For one, the sand was marked up to all hell here – she'd had to settle for a hallex on the way in and leave it at that. For another, the music wasn't really music so much as a constant bass beat that registered low enough on the audible spectrum to make the biotic's teeth hurt.

As far as the drell went, it was not Thane, and really, that was all that mattered. Still, if you ignored that _massive_ strike against him, he wasn't so bad – he was from the same walk of life as Jack, so to speak, and that had to count for something. Rather than a sleek, emerald assassin, this drell was a crimson-scaled ball of muscles, so to speak. His hardsuit positively bristled with weapons, and just in case anybody didn't get the message, there were two black-armored soldiers openly carrying assault rifles behind him (which, on a place as heavily regulated as Illium, translated to _brass fucking balls_.)

They didn't know each other personally, but there was enough reputation on both ends that when she'd requested the meeting, he'd been happy to accommodate her on short notice (and short notice it was! It had only been an hour since they'd left Liara's soon-to-be ex-office). That was a good sign, particularly since Jack was in the mood to talk business.

"So!" she said by way of greeting, settling in across the table from him. "Kinda surprised me to hear you were on Illium. I thought you were banned after the Dilinaga Plaza Massacre."

She was rewarded with a sly grin. "You thought correctly," the drell rasped. "But let's be serious: would that stop _you_?"

It took a second for Jack to chuckle at the question; she'd been somewhat distracted by his voice. Christ, the guy sounded like a garbage disposal choking on a spoon. Apparently the jagged scar that circumnavigated most of his throat wasn't just for show. "A'ight, point taken. Look, I'm not really interested in shooting the shit, so let's get straight to business: I need a place raided and that means I need warm bodies. You're supposed to be one of the best. QED."

"That," her potential business partner answered, "is not an allegation this one would deny. It would be interested, however, in knowing the particulars of the job." He leaned his elbows on the table and steepled his fingers; sulfur-colored eyes peered over them, regarding Jack with interest. "Who's the target, what needs to be done to them, where are they, et cetera."

That was fair. "The target's a weapons dealer who mostly ships to the Terminus. He's got a well-fortified penthouse with a barracks and shipyard, plus assault vehicles. What we're after is a graybox that'll be in his vault...which is under the penthouse, if our information is correct. So we need to get in there without leveling the place, because we can't risk damaging the graybox." Was there anything she'd forgotten? ...Oh! "He contracts Eclipse for his private security – is that going to be a problem?"

"Not at all. The divisions of Eclipse with which this one tends to associate itself don't provide security for anyone but themselves." It was a cryptic (and maybe a little ominous) statement that Jack had no interest whatsoever in pursuing.

"Fuckin' A." She leaned forward, mirroring his icy, analytical stare (and doing a pretty damn good job of it, all things considered). "We'll need a ship as well, to transport my team along with your guys. Hock's penthouse has a shuttle hangar, but it'll probably be best to airdrop any—"

One browridge twitched upwards. "Forgive the interruption, but..._Donovan_ Hock?"

"That's the one," Jack answered. "Why? Scared of him?" There was more than a hint of a challenge in her voice. It'd be a useful indicator of how good this guy was; if he got bitchy about the implication there, maybe he wasn't the kind of merc they were after. Kasumi's job was going to take ice-cold professionals to pull off.

To her pleasant surprise, he blew the taunt off with a derisive chuckle. "Merely formulating the plan, nothing more."

Okay. Perfect. He was okay with the premise, he was convinced he could do it, and he was already putting together a plan of attack. The convict silently ordered herself to send Liara T'Soni a bouquet (or possibly a nice dress, so she could go out and get laid; it'd do her a world of good), because the information on the mercenary corporations available on Illium had been _gold_.

There was only one more hurdle to cross, and it was a potential whopper. "So...how much?"

The yellow eyes remained impassive, and without looking away from her, the drell reached under the table (Jack tensed up instinctively, her hand on the grip of her shotgun) and produced a datapad. He typed a number into its glowing surface and pushed it across the table to her. "That much."

There was a pause as Jack read the datapad. She blinked. Read it again. Read it a third time, just to be sure she'd counted the number of digits correctly. Convinced herself she'd counted wrong and read it a fourth time.

After the fourth read-through, she looked up. "You are _out of your fuckin' mind_."

* * *

"So why aren't you in there with her?"

Thane found himself startled to attention, having previously been absorbed in the Nos Astra skyline. Strange how in all the time he'd stayed on this world, he'd never gotten a chance to really sit back, relax, and admire Illium's beauty. There had always been a job at hand, a necessity of haste.

"I'm sorry," he said, looking back to Kasumi. "Did you ask me something?"

As the evening wore on and more of the plan began to take shape, the thief had begun to calm herself a bit. It wasn't particularly obvious unless you were adept at reading people, which Thane was (and having a perfect recollection of her every gesture for comparison didn't hurt either), but she was starting to settle down. "I asked why you weren't in there." She helpfully pointed across the street to Audacity's front doors. "With Jack, I mean."

"Ah." Thane leaned back comfortably; they'd manage to secure a bench from a conveniently-departing elcor, and it was nice to be sitting down after a day of running around Illium gathering intelligence and being prodded by doctors. (He was seated on the bench, and Kasumi, by contrast, was on top of the bench's back. Unsurprising, that.) "Jack asked me to stay out here with you. Apparently the man she's looking to hire has no particular love for Compacted drell, former or otherwise."

A pause.

"...When did you get that?"

Kasumi blinked. "What, the ice cream? There was a vendor selling them on the way here." She paused to nibble on the cone of creamy vanilla goodness. "I pulled a sneak-and-snatch on him, and bam, ice cream. Just the thing to take the edge off a humid Illium evening."

"You don't feel sorry about it?" the drell asked, folding his arms.

"Of course I do! If I'd waited another minute, I could've gotten one with sprinkles." She met his disapproving gaze head-on, and grinned like a Cheshire cat. "I _paid_ for it, all right? It's just that the money's in his hat. He might have to look for it."

Despite himself, Thane chuckled. "I've got my hands full being one woman's conscience as it is, Kasumi. I'm not sure I'll be able to handle the next few weeks."

The two sat in silence for a moment. Although his eyes were fixed on the nightclub's entrance, watching for signs of danger, Thane could clearly hear Kasumi hopping down from her perch, and the impact of a body on the bench suggested that she'd opted to sit down next to him. A second later, the increased proximity of her voice confirmed it. "You know...about that. I was wondering."

"Mm?"

"Well, about what you said just now, with the conscience thing. If this is too personal, just yell at me," and here Kasumi broke off for a moment to indulge in the ice cream, "but is that why you, um, got involved with her? To fix her, I mean."

This was enough to draw the drell's attention from Audacity. He sat up straighter and glanced over to Kasumi; both sets of eyelids blinked rapidly for a moment before the surprise died down. "Er...I'm sorry," he exclaimed. "To _fix_ her, you said?"

"Well, yeah." The thief leaned back against the bench and tossed her emptied cone into a nearby disposal bin with a picture-perfect overhand arc. "To make her not quite as...well, no offense, but the only thing that's coming to mind is 'not quite as crazy'."

For all the insensitivity of the statement, Thane couldn't help but smile a little. Jack was certainly _volatile_, if nothing else, but... "No." An amused glint flashed briefly in his eyes. "I admit that we've helped each other through a fair amount of personal problems, yes. She's come so far, achieved so much in her struggle to understand her place in the galaxy, and I'm proud to say that some of that was with my help. But my desire to ease Jack's frustrations was symptomatic of my interest in her – first as friends, then...well, as more." Faint echoes of memories swirled in his mind, not strong enough to trigger a solipsism but not weak enough to be ignored. "I helped her find a measure of peace because I wanted to become closer to her. Not the other way around."

There was a moment of contemplative silence, after which Kasumi responded with an eloquent "Hrm." She swiped at her lips, clearing off any ice cream and inadvertently smearing the painted stripe on her chin into a comical cloud. "So you wouldn't rather she dial it down a little?"

"Not for a king's bounty," he replied firmly. "She's like a force of nature – intense, primal, uncontrollable. _Intoxicating_. It's good, I think, to have someone around who challenges your way of thinking – they serve as a sort of complement to your style, a window to perspectives you may never have considered." The ghost of a smile flickered on Thane's lips. "I've done what I can to curb her more self-destructive tendencies, certainly...because I want her to be as happy as I am with who she is."

The thief fell silent, and although Thane waited for a response, all that came was distant chatter from the Nos Astra nightlife. In the distance, a small shuttle, adorned with a flashing Tupari billboard, eased its way over the club's roof.

* * *

On a less-civilized world, Jack's refutation of the asking price would probably have led to violence. Fortunately, this was Illium, meaning it did not (this was a good thing, as the less attention either participant attracted to themselves, the better). The drell humored her outburst, and in fact looked rather amused, which Jack supposed she could identify with a little. After all, when the galaxy tended to be scared of you, a little defiance now and then was refreshing.

"Not an unfamiliar allegation," he replied with cheerful aplomb, "but that's an extremely reasonable rate. You want a strike force, plus transportation, to assault a fortified complex on a highly-civilized planet in the_ same cluster _as the Citadel. This one assures you that no one else is going to be nearly as generous. In fact, it even factored in a 10% discount, simply based on your reputation."

"Hrm." The convict shifted in her chair, feeling a bit more self-conscious. Everything he was saying was true, admittedly. She'd never had much of a need to hire mercenaries in the past; one-woman natural disasters rarely needed to pay for backup, after all. "So that's it, then?"

The red-scaled drell steepled his fingers in front of his nose. She could just barely make out the citrine half-moons of his eyes, peering over black-gloved knuckles. "Any further and this one is cutting its own throat," he assured her, without a hint of humor in his deep, throaty rasp. "And while cutting its throat is a time-honored tradition-" and here he tapped the scar zig-zagging its way over his dewlap, "-it has decided to be somewhat of a trend-breaker. That's as low as it will accept – and it's less than you'll get from one of the bigger Terminus PMCs."

Well, this was...yeah, this was bad. Jack glanced down at the table, a hint of self-consciousness effusing her thoughts. He was probably telling the truth – he had no reason not to, after all – and if this was the case, hiring mercenaries (decent ones, at least) was an expenditure that was _way_ out of her budget, and probably Thane's too.

Hmmm. Maybe Kasumi had a decent nest egg squirreled away. Considering how much she stole, perhaps she would be unexpectedly rich and capable of chipping in to cover the costs. It probably wasn't going to happen (judging from her personality, Jack suspected the thief spent money as fast as she gathered it), but it'd be worth asking her about, at least. After all, this entire operation was for her benefit.

"All right," she said, looking back up to meet his eyes. "Give me a minute to talk to my running crew and we'll get-"

It was right about that time that the world, as the world was wont to do when Jack didn't want it to, exploded.

The blast of sound and fury and heat came from directly overhead, and delivered its did-you-miss-me present in the form of a shower of glass fragments (presumably the remnants of the skylight). Having been knocked clear out of her chair by the explosion, Jack barely had enough time to bring up a biotic barrier, and even then a few shards still managed to stab at her exposed back and shoulders. Thankfully, they were little more than pinpricks of annoyance, between the barrier and the adrenaline rush that tended to come with massive explosions.

Despite being slightly deafened, the convict could pick up the familiar sounds of omnisteel cable unfurling, ends of each line thudding against the floor over the screams of Audacity patrons. _Ziplines. Whoever just hit this place, they're dropping troops_. Sure enough, a set of black boots dropped to the floor a moment later, immediately in front of her field of vision. Jack rolled onto her back and was treated to the sight of a black-uniformed human in a gas mask training his weapon on her. Probably thought she was stunned.

The biotic lift she gave him suggested otherwise. Indeed, the masked man barely had time to cry out before he struck a ceiling girder, back-first, and doubled over backwards with a wet crunch. His body flopped limply back to the ground as Jack leapt to her feet and drew her shotgun. Across the overturned table, her contact's soldiers had taken up a defensive position, and were pouring mass accelerator rounds into the horde of gas-masked soldiers dropping from the ceiling. The drell himself had occupied a spot next to his men, and as Jack scrambled across the floor to get to his position, he leaned out to suppress two attackers who were targeting her from behind a pillar. By the time he'd ducked behind the table again, Jack was right next to him.

Their eyes met.

"Allies?" he rasped, ejecting a heat sink from his rifle.

"Allies," she agreed. "Got a plan?"

"We need to get outside." The drell popped up for a split second to shoot back, but a hailstorm of gunfire forced him to withdraw immediately. A telltale blue flickering indicated his shields had almost dropped. "They've got gas masks – that means there's a good chance they'll try to flood the building with tear gas, or a neurotoxin. Normally, this one would suggest going out the front door, but they're thorough enough that they've probably got the doors sealed."

Jack peered up at the shattered skylight. "The roof, then." Inwardly, her mind was racing – how had Donovan Hock's men found them here? Had they traced Kasumi to Illium that easily, and decided to finish the job? Maybe there were more of these bastards outside trying the same trick on Kasumi and Thane...

..._Thane_. Oh shit, she had to get to him.

"Not a bad idea..." Another pause from her erstwhile ally. The two at the pillar were really pressing them aggressively. "Stairs are across the room, though, and we don't have an alternate way up."

"One second." At the familiar sound of heatsinks hissing at full capacity, the convict leapt to her feet and caught the bottom end of the pillar with a double-handed biotic grip. She braced herself in place and yanked backwards, letting out a war cry that would've made a krogan proud. Just as planned, the pillar toppled over and leaned itself against the hole that formerly comprised part of the skylight; if the assailants had been intimidated by her roar, they didn't get a chance to express it, because falling rubble reduced their skulls to liquid sloshing inside their gas masks a moment later. Jack pointed to the overturned pillar. "There's our alternate way up."

The drell laughed, a sound which, considering his voice, easily qualified for a spot in the top three most unpleasant sounds Jack had ever heard. "Perfect. Let's move."

* * *

"Keiji and I," Kasumi was saying outside, "were two peas in a pod, so to speak. We shared the same love of puzzles, challenges, 'impossible' heists, that kind of thing. There wasn't much we couldn't relate on, I think...and when there was, he was always so patient about it. He'd always try to see things my way when we disagreed."

After a moment of mulling over it, Thane nodded. "That sounds like as healthy a relationship as the one Jack and I share. Likely more stable, at any rate." He smiled.

"Stable...yeah." The thief drew her knees up to her chest, hugging them close, and rested her chin on top of them. Her stare didn't seem to be focused on anything in particular, except perhaps the pavement. It was sobering, Thane mused, to see how drastically she changed from her normal cheerful self when this subject came up. It would do her some good to get closure with the graybox, and perhaps to talk about her loss with someone.

"I..." Oh, here it came. Kasumi kept her eyes downcast, refusing to look at the drell, and her expression tightened almost imperceptibly below the hood. "Thane, when this is over... with the graybox and everything, I mean...I don't know what I'm going to do without him. It's just...he was always there; he'd been there for so long – even though looking back, it barely feels like it lasted any time at all – and it just seemed like we'd always be together." She chewed at a lip. "And...now we're not. And we won't be, ever again."

Being in the unique position to understand exactly what she meant, Thane's heart winced with sympathy for the human. When you'd been with someone long enough that they seemed like an inseparatble part of you, losing them was a shattering experience. At least Kasumi and her partner had enjoyed their time together, had no crippling regrets and could-have-beens and if-onlys.

_-the slam of a door, consignment to another trip, another job. sunset eyes, mournful behind him, filled with resent and longing-_

No. Not now. He suppressed the memory as it leapt to his mind, and rested a cautious hand on the thief's shoulder. "In a sense, you will be." Seeing Kasumi's inquisitive gaze, he continued: "When the dead have passed from us, we can still preserve them. In time, the pain of loss will fade, Kasumi, and you'll be left with the best recollections of your time together. Perhaps this is merely the drell perspective speaking, but the greatest honor we can do for those who've accepted the sea's embrace is to hold them near to us, to let them live on in our memories."

She nodded slowly. "I see what you mean. I just wish that there'd been more—"

The explosion from across the street nearly blinded both of them, and as it was, the shockwave was enough to nearly knock the pair off their bench. Thane sat up in horror as the shuttle above Audacity lowered closer to the roof, having successfully blown the club open, and began to drop armed men on ziplines in and around the establishment.

"Oh god. Jack's in there!" Kasumi leapt to her feet. "We've got to—" A moment later, she realized she was essentially talking to herself, as Thane had bounded from the bench and was sprinting towards Audacity at full tilt, aiming straight for the two masked men who had just sealed the front door.

They never knew what hit them. The technician of the pair had just finished interfacing his omnitool with the door's control panel and turned around when a streak of black and green raced into his field of vision and nailed him across the bottom of his gas mask with a picture-perfect forearm strike. His partner had all of half a second to react, and to his credit he managed to actually get his rifle up before Thane drilled him in the solar plexus with a straight kick, causing him to collapse against the wall amidst frantic gasping. This was by no means a respite for the technician, who immediately found himself on the receiving end of a vicious gouge to one eye and, while blinded, a firm grip on his jaw and the back of his head. A moment later, Thane twisted _hard_ and the technician got all the respite he'd ever want; the drell had put so much force into the neck snap that the man's head was now facing the clear opposite direction. It stared backwards for a moment, then ragdolled and hung limply between his shoulder blades as he collapsed.

The other attacker had nearly recovered from Thane's strike when a double-tap from Kasumi's pistol emptied the contents of his chest cavity on the door behind him. She didn't even take the time to lower the weapon as she pulled up her omnitool, attempting to override the door locks. "No good! They didn't just lock it, they fried the controls!"

"We need a different way in," Thane replied, his tone decidedly cool in light of how frantic the situation was. To survive in this kind of situation, you had to remain calm. Professional. Collected. He compartmentalized his anger at the assassins, his concern for Jack – everything took a backseat to accomplishing the task before them as quickly and cleanly as possible. Thane's eyes scanned the club's exterior in zig-zags, looking for a different entry point – aha! "The roof. We can go in through there."

"Way ahead of you there." Expanding what looked like a miniature harpoon pistol, Kasumi fired a shot at the roof. Sure enough, there was a cable attached to the claw, which hooked in place below the hovering shuttle full of killers. "Hang on to me and we'll grapple up."

It was an appropriately swift solution. Hopefully they wouldn't be too late...

* * *

Having arrived on the roof already, Jack's contact was in the midst of lighting up unseen assailants with his assault rifle. The biotic herself was bringing up the rear, however, and still perched precariously on the leaning pillar, trying to climb her way up through the skylight. As predicted, gas grenades had been dropped moments before, and the interior of Audacity had begun to fill up with a cloudy white fog. Slowly, the screams of patrons below them had given way to coughs, frantic choking, and then to silence. Shit, these guys didn't mess around.

The gas didn't affect the attackers because of their masks, of course, which meant she still had to worry about incoming fire while trying to climb the pillar. Thankfully, she was only shot at once the entire way up, by a lone assassin. A quick biotic pull jerked him off his feet and sent him flying through the air towards her, where a shotgun blast promptly erased all hope of identifying his body via facial features.

By the time Jack clawed her way up onto the roof, there were already black-clad corpses strewn every which way. (It was a good thing the red drell had managed to hold them off so far; considering she'd been busy covering the rear, if he'd failed they would have been overwhelmed.) Several of the bodies had been stacked to form a makeshift sandbag line, behind which he was currently crouched. They wouldn't stop tungsten carbide rounds or similar ordnance, but beggars couldn't be choosers, and the pile was a better choice of cover than the obviously-explosive air conditioning unit on the other side of the roof.

Jack took a shot at the shuttle as it turned around, giving her its back. The cloud of shavings plinked off the craft's armored side, but hell, it felt good to get a little catharsis. A second later, though, she got a better source of frustration-venting, as the bay doors at the back of the shuttle dropped open to reveal another group of gas-masked troops. This one, however, had a very special addition indeed: a heavily-armored woman with the unmistakable blue bubble of a biotic adept around her. Although she wore no insignia, like the rest of the mysterious attackers, it was obvious from her position in the formation that she held some kind of rank.

"There she is!" the woman (the captain?) shouted, pointing a finger across the roof. Biotic energy began to swirl around her frame. "Visual contact re-established! Enact Zero protocols!"

...Wait. _What?_

Jack's blood ran cold. Her worries earlier had been misplaced. These weren't Hock's men at all, because from what she'd just seen, they weren't trying to track down Kasumi.

They were after _her_.


	4. My Own Spider's Web

Mass Effect is the property of Bioware.

**A/N: **As you know (well, probably not, but I'm telling you), November is ASC conference month, so it was pretty much entirely taken up by school/work (they're basically the same thing for me). So I apologize for the time the update took; it's been quite busy indeed.

* * *

"What we're looking at is a class two potential threat to Alliance security interests."

The documents listed a criminal record that was slightly longer than an elcor's foreleg. It was practically a laundry list of every crime you could commit in Citadel space, with a few exceptions – a noticeable lack, for example, of "enslavement of sentients" or "conspiracy to enslave sentients". Other interesting things about the rap sheet included several crimes so large in scope that they'd normally be the work of an entire criminal syndicate, not a single small team. Stealing an Alliance frigate? Cleaning out the Fifth Bank of Irune's vault? Ramming a space station into a moon?

"That's...quite a record, Doctor."

"Yes, so it is." Across the table, the man with the golden eyes interlaced his fingers, peering over the tops of his knuckles. "I think, Commander, that the most striking thing about that record is its lack of _purpose_. You look at the big names as far as galactic menaces go – let's take Saren, for example, whom your team stopped two years ago – and their intent is clear: conquest. Subjugation. Look at the crimes before you now, though, and what do you see? There's no rhyme, no reason to her actions, no overarching purpose. She is a creature of impulse, and her impulses are driven by hatred." Beneath his steepled fingers, blue-veined lips pursed together tightly. "The subject aspires to nothing so grand as galactic domination; she merely wishes to set the galaxy aflame and revel deliriously amidst its ashes. You are, no doubt, beginning to understand why Alliance high command thought to assign a military liason of your impressive standing."

"It makes sense. Who's providing oversight on this, though? Admiral Anderson?"

"I'm afraid that's classified," the man replied, smoothing the rigidly-starched collar of his lab coat. "Suffice to say that oversight is above even Councilor Udina – we're running a project that stands to gain the Alliance a tremendous amount of potential military superiority from an infantry perspective, and the subject is very interested indeed in sabotaging it for all of us." His gaze was steady, unblinking over the crescent moon lenses of rose-tinted sunglasses. "That's why command thought it would be best to have a high-ranking representative of the military as a consultant on our manhunt – hence, your presence, Commander...ah?"

"Alenko, sir. I was deep-cover on a colony outreach program prior to being reassigned to your detail."

"Excellent. You shouldn't need to do any actual fighting, as our recovery units are adept enough, particularly at dealing with biotics. Your presence simply legitimizes the operation entailing our eventual recovery of the subject."

Systems Alliance Commander Kaidan Alenko set the datapad down on the table before him. His brow furrowed as he mulled over the text he'd just read. "From what you've shown me, the sooner we get her into custody, the better. When do we start?"

The man with the golden eyes smiled – or exercised the motions of a smile, at least, pulling his lips into a taut rictus. "You'll be pleased to hear that we already have."

* * *

It would be safe to say that, when unfamiliar armies popped up without warning and disrupted Jack's routine by trying to shoot and/or capture her, that she tended to react with overenthusiasm (presumably borne of urgency). Combine this with the fact that even in a normal combat situation, she had no grasp whatsoever of the concept of overkill, and you will begin to understand the carnage that immediately took place up on Audacity's rooftop.

As a horde of masked men stormed down from the gunship's ramp, Jack dove to one side and threw a shockwave right into their midst. It had distressingly less of an effect than she'd hoped for: a few bodies launched into the air, but most of them stayed braced, and the woman in the center, her face masked by a Kestrel autotargeting faceplate, wasn't even fazed by the strike. She hefted a rifle as Jack hit the ground and, bringing it to bear, fired two shots, the classic double-tap.

Fortunately, it'd take more than a few shots to overcome a biotic barrier, particularly from someone as adept as Jack. Both rounds stopped cold before they'd come within four inches of her prone form, then dropped to the rooftop, in just enough time for her to notice the strangest thing – needles. They were shooting needles at her. Tranquilizers? That meant not only were they after her, they wanted her _alive_. The disturbing revelations just kept piling up tonight.

Damn it. Where the hell were Thane and Kasumi? They had to have seen the explosion...hopefully they were on the way over, although Jack certainly wouldn't be able to blame them for cutting and running, considering the situation.

Across the rooftop, Jack's erstwhile drell ally was liberally handing out streams of mass-accelerated tungsten carbide into the group of commandos with intermittent bursts of gunfire. Most of the attackers dispersed to deal with him, but the woman in the Kestrel helmet broke off from the pack and charged towards Jack – literally charged, with a trail of neon blue energy lighting up the night behind her. There wasn't much time to do more than roll to the side, particularly since she could see the roundhouse kick the woman was aiming at her prone form (from a mile away, in fact. Holy shit, if that connected, it was going to _hurt_). All she could hope to do was flare out her barrier, roll for it, and hope that biotics plus momentum took off some of the edge.

It did not.

Jack felt at least one rib crack from the impact of the kick, and the rooftop flew away from her as she bounced into the air from the sheer force behind the blow. She twisted in the air, brought her shotgun to bear, volleyed a wild shot at the attacker on her way back down – and saw it splatter harmlessly against the woman's barrier. _Fuuuuuuuck_.

There was no more time to contemplate just how thoroughly screwed she was: the woman reached out, catching Jack in a biotic pull, and dragged her forward at what felt like mach one, or at least what felt like mach one until an outstretched arm clotheslined her so hard she did a full backflip in midair. The armor, combined with the biotic force, made for a devastating strike – in fact, the convict's world was briefly consumed with darkness as she blacked out. Thankfully, it was only momentary; un-thankfully, the wake-up call came in the form of a biotic force that lifted her back off the ground, leaving her suspended in midair. Jack thrashed from side to side, trying to break free, but the vanguard had her clean, and she couldn't do much more than squirm ineffectively. The exertion, combined with the punishment her torso had taken in the last fifteen seconds, had her chest burning, screaming for relief.

Beneath her, the masked woman stared up at Jack impassively. There was a moment's silence, amidst the carnage and gunfire, while she studied the floating biotic, and then at last, she reached for a sheath on her belt and slowly, lovingly drew a high-frequency knife.

Jack could feel her heart racing. This was bad. She was stunned, trapped in the vanguard's grip, and the way things were going, she was going to get gutted in the next few moments. Her pulse pounded in her ears, so hard that it nearly drowned out the familiar sound of a grappling hook finding purchase on the rooftop, followed by the whizz of retracting cable—

_BANG_. She'd had no idea the flashbang (Kasumi's, no doubt) was coming, and it was mostly a stroke of luck that Jack had been looking the other way. As it was, although she escaped the visual effects of the explosion, it temporarily reduced the noise of the battle around her into a high-pitched, muffled whine as she hit the rooftop once again. The woman had dropped her and was clutching at the faceplate on the Kestrel helmet; presumably the flashbang had wreaked havoc on its targeting interface. Any redundant systems would kick in shortly, though, and so Jack rolled to one side to grab her shotgun, which turned her towards the side of the roof from which the flashbang had come...

...and there he was, Thane Krios, like a scourge-wielding angel out of a cruel god's heaven, all cold professionalism and murderous intent. Kasumi was nowhere to be seen, but the enemy vanguard had enough trouble on her hands as it was; the next shot from Thane's pistol hit her straight in the side of the head, punching just deep enough into her barrier to short out the helmet altogether. This was all the opportunity Jack needed to get to her feet and stagger towards a nearby pile of rubble. It wasn't perfect, but it was the closest thing to cover she could find at the moment.

With an icy snarl, the woman tore her helmet free, and for the first time, Jack got a look at her features. The Kestrel's removal had freed a length of peroxide-blonde hair, trailing down to the vanguard's armored shoulders from around a well-defined face with cheekbones that looked practically razor-edged. But what really caught Jack's gaze, what stood out instantly at a first look, were the eyes. Cobalt blue, with pupils the convict could swear were more gun-metal than black, they stared straight ahead with what could only be described as an obsessive, almost maniacal hatred. Seeing the venom in that glare, Jack had to wonder if she'd ever hated anyone nearly as much as this unknown assailant seemed to hate her.

There was not, of course, any time to have a metaphorical dick-waving contest over who could muster up the most ill will. Immediately after getting her helmet off, the woman took a rather unorthodox plan of attack and _threw it_ at Thane; this would normally not be much, but with biotics behind it, the helmet became a fastball that nailed him clear in the chest and knocked him off his feet. That was all the time the vanguard needed to raise her assault rifle and turn to reopen fire on Jack. Fortunately, the brief reprieve that Thane had bought had proven to be more than enough time for Jack to get her shotgun up and drill their adversary in the chest with a cloud of warp-infused tungsten shrapnel. The impact was enough to stagger the woman and knock her rifle away, and the ensuing biotic throw knocked her clear across the rooftop. She sailed a good ten meters through the melee (bowling over three of the masked assailants and nearly winging Kasumi, who had joined the red drell in culling the group of attackers) and crashed into the generator unit that powered a good chunk of Audacity. The unit's element zero core sparked wildly, having clearly been damaged; it would shortly become unstable and a significant force would probably cause it to explode.

Unfortunately, it seemed that the mysterious attacker had come to the same conclusion. No sooner was the woman on her feet than she hoisted the generator effortlessly with a biotic lift. The massive device hovered next to her, spitting blue sparks every which way, and it seemed certain that in another instant, she'd hurl it at them...and very likely blow them up.

As Jack aimed her shotgun, she became aware that Thane had risen and moved to her side without her noticing (no surprise, that). "_Siha_!" he rasped. "I'll disrupt her – neutralize the generator!"

Well, no reason to ask for clarification. Jack lowered the shotgun and latched onto the generator with a biotic snare from her free hand, trying to hold it in place as its temporary owner attempted to launch it. It was a hell of a struggle, but for all her biotic superiority, the vanguard was clearly having some difficulties keeping her barrier up and trying to throw the generator at the same time, and when Thane's rapid-fire pistol shots began splashing into her shield, it quickly became totally unfeasible. It was going to end up being either the barrier or the generator that fell first, and the telltale spark of shots against Kestrel armor told Jack exactly which it had been. Shortly afterwards, the lack of a barrier proved to be the vanguard's undoing, as one of Thane's shots nailed her right in the shoulder, and she dropped to the rooftop.

With the generator now solely under her control, Jack did what came naturally: she hoisted the unit into the air and then hit it with a biotic piledriver, slamming it down right next to their adversary.

She had the satisfaction of seeing the expression on the woman's face (it was the type of expression Jack readily interpreted as "oh, shit") in the split second before the eezo core detonated, and the subsequent explosion nailed her head-on with such impact that it actually knocked her off the roof of Audacity. Several of the henchmen in the nearby vicinity were simply incinerated; there weren't many of them left, given how fast Kasumi and the other drell had been mopping them up.

With one arm pressed against her aching side, Jack waved to the pair. "C'mon!" she shouted, barely audible over the gunfire and sirens in the distance. "Cops coming! We gotta go!" A little cover fire, with help from Thane, kept them safe until the team was reunited at last, at which point Jack set an example for the other three by turning and leaping down to a lower, nearby rooftop. From there, she dove down to the street level and hit the ground running.

The rest of the group was right behind her.

* * *

"Intel had already traced her to Nos Astra, on Illium. What they found was ominous – by the looks of it, she's been _recruiting_. Already she's gathered a conglomerate of assassins and thieves to her side, and by the time we got a fix on her location, she'd arranged a meeting with that monster behind the Dilinaga Plaza Massacre a few years back."

Kaidan's expression was grave. "Doesn't take a strategic mastermind to figure out the potential threat."

"Well said, Commander," answered the man with the golden eyes. He reached across his desk, filling a snifter halfway with a liquid the shade of rich mahogany. "Cognac? It's from Sur'kesh – layered, intense, and over all too soon, not unlike the salarians themselves."

"Ah, no thank you."

The conversation reached a pause as the man took a sip from his drink. He briefly savored the taste of the alcohol before swallowing it down. "Mm. Excellent." The tight-lipped smile on his face stopped several miles short of his eyes. "You're correct, of course. The threat to the Citadel's security interests is potentially quite severe. That's why our specialty team was sent in to deal with this particular threat."

The commander blinked. "In Illium?" he exclaimed. "That's in the Terminus, and if the Council wouldn't even send a Spectre out there to deal with Saren, how'd you manage to get approval for this?"

"I'm afraid that's classified," the man replied. "Well above most of the pay grades in the Alliance, in fact. You must understand, this kind of operation has a very sensitive nature, seeing as it involves a large-scale security threat and, more importantly, possible issues regarding the sovereignty of the Terminus worlds." He took another deliberate swallow from the glass, and as his head tilted back, the office's dim light played havoc over his bare scalp. "Secretive meetings, redacted documents, all kinds of ridiculous acronyms - you know how these types are with their acronyms. Try not to become like that."

"HUA, sir," Kaidan answered.

"Eh?"

"Er...joke."

"I see." One hand played idly with the snifter's stem, and the other tapped its fingertips against a silver goatee. "As I was saying, you needn't be concerned about the visibility of the operation – our kill teams keep a low profile, and avoidance of collateral damage is their utmost concern."

* * *

"...are still coming in, the death toll of the Audacity shootout has been updated to one hundred and eighty-three," announced the disembodied voice of the newscaster on Illium's ubiquitous overhead billboards. "Early estimates are projecting as much as two and a half million credits' worth of property damage from the explosions and ensuing firefight. While the bodies of several attackers are confirmed to have been recovered, Magistrate T'Lanis has not yet released any information regarding the identity of the attack's perpetrators..."

They had run for the past sixteen blocks straight.

Jack's pulse was thundering in her ears, drowning out the news report above them altogether. Despite her excellent physical condition, the eight minutes of running combined with a cracked rib had done a number on her stamina. If they went another block, she was fairly sure her that her heart, despite the cardiostrengthener weave, would explode in her chest.

"We...we gotta stop," she managed to gasp out. "Have to...have to..." The rest of the sentence came out as a cough that felt like a knife wound in her side, the kind where you can tell they don't like you because they twist the blade while it's in. Mercifully, the pounding of boots against pavement slowed to a halt, and Jack took the opportunity to double over and pray for death. Her heart rate slowly began to return to something approaching normality.

"Thane!" That was Kasumi's voice behind her, filled with an unusual note of urgency and concern. "Thane, are you all right?"

...Was _Thane_ all right? Who was the one that just got slapped around a rooftop here? Jack turned to stare incredulously at the thief...and right away, her indignation was swallowed by cold fear. Kasumi had made it to the wall just in time to support Thane, who had previously been leaning against it until his legs went rubbery. His breathing was shaky and erratic, and although he clung to as much dignity as a man in his position could, he looked as if he were about to collapse. At first, Jack thought he'd been hit, but the lack of gunshot wounds stymied that theory – which left the exertion from the run and the dawning realization that the drell simply wasn't getting enough oxygen. The sheer physical demand of their escape, along with the reduced performance of his Kepral's-ravaged lungs, were causing him to waver on the edge of consciousness.

A panic-induced burst of fresh energy raced through Jack's veins. "Thane?" she wheezed, limping over to the pair. "Oh shit. Shit, if you die on me I'll fuckin' kill you. Just...just relax, try to breathe; we can get a-"

"_Siha_, I'm not _dying_," Thane managed around a cough. "I simply need a moment to catch my breath." Grasping Kasumi's arm, he shakily stood and took a step or two on his own, wobbly but serviceable. "Don't think I'm not grateful for your concern, though. Are _you_ all right?"

The convict's surge of relief quickly overshadowed by an embarrassed flush. The extent to which she'd panicked over apparently nothing was kind of troubling, particularly considering it was _her_. She had a reputation to maintain, after all. "Yeah...I'm fine. Busted up a rib on the roof, but one applicator should fix that once we get some gel." Hopefully, the drell merc she'd been trying to hire had been too distracted with small issues like 'having been attacked and needing to kill a bunch of motherfuckers' to notice their interaction. Speaking of which... "Hey, slaughterhouse. How you holding up over there?"

"Getting too old for this shit, mostly," the red drell answered. Like Kasumi, he seemed to have made the run with minimal problems (owing to lack of Kepral's or injuries), and had even settled down enough to light a cigarette. "Looks like your target's decided to go proactive." He glanced over at Jack. "All right. Getting out of that ambush would have been hell without you helping out, so this one is feeling _grateful_, we'll say."

"Enough to reduce your fee?" Jack inquired with a grin.

The stare she got was impressively disdainful. "Not remotely. But considering Mr. Hock just tried to murder this one alongside you, it likewise has a vested interest in seeing him get his. So, you want covert transportation to wherever you plan to hit him? Consider it done; this one will let you use one of its frigates, and supply the crew on top of that." The drell sucked down a drag from his cigarette like he was making up for lost time, and looked rather draconic for a moment as he blew the cloud out his nostrils. "Acceptable?"

It wasn't what she'd been hoping for, but when you worked with the notorious types, you took what you could get (something Jack had taken advantage of, being one of those notorious types, on many an occasion). "All right," she responded. "I'll call you when we're ready to move."

"Understood." With business out of the way, he turned and proceeded away from the group down an alley. One hand moved up to his commlink, and the last Jack heard of the drell was his voice trailing into the distance. "CIC, this one's going to need an extraction on the double; the district's hot at the moment. Yes, from the attack. No, this one did _not_ blow up Audacity; the last thing it needs is more heat from Nos Astra..."

The convict turned, and was immediately confronted with a distraught Kasumi. "Damn it," the thief swore, kicking an empty Tupari can across the alley in a rather childish fit of pique. "_Damn_ it! I thought I'd kept my trail clean by the time I came here. I used three different embedded aliases, traveled totally off the record – I even cleaned out most of my accounts trying to make sure I couldn't be followed!" She looked to be on the edge of either bursting into frustrated tears or screaming obscenities at the sky. "I must've screwed up somewhere along the line, and now I've led Hock straight to you...made it so he knows you're helping to hide me. It's all my fault."

"Those weren't Hock's men," Jack replied. She helped to steady Thane as they moved out of the alley and toward the street.

"I shouldn't have gotten you involved, especially now that he knows me," Kasumi fretted, wringing her hands. "Look, I'm sorry; the last few weeks have been murder, and I'm just trying to-" She blinked. "Wait, _what_?"

"If they were, they would've been after you." Jack swiped a credit chit at a nearby taxi kiosk, and glanced at the sky to watch for one of Nos Astra's myriad automated transport units. "But they were there for _me_. Shouting about 'Zero protocols', trying to shoot me with tranq darts and the rest of you with fuckin' hand cannons...they came for me, not you. They're with somebody else. Somebody well-trained and well-equipped, somebody who doesn't give a shit what's in their way."

It was silent for a moment. All three of them stared down at the pavement, processing this turn of events.

"...Disquieting," Thane finally announced.

Jack snorted. "Fuckin' A."

"I notice you didn't inform your contact of that detail."

"He didn't need to know," she shrugged. "Besides, we got a frigate out of the deal, didn't we?"

An automated taxi descended at last, and the trio piled into it. Jack was the last in, as she needed some space, given the significant discomfort of her current location. "So what's the plan?"

"We can't go back to the apartment," Kasumi ventured. "If they've been searching for you, they're probably watching it now. We should call Dr. T'Soni, tell her there's been a change in the timetable, and see if she can get a new plan set up. Then we'll take the frigate offworld and go after Hock...that'll get us away from the people who are chasing you."

"That's a sound strategy," Thane agreed. "We'll get Jack some medigel on the way. Give the broker a call first, and we'll determine how to proceed."

As if on cue, the human's omnitool thrummed. A message popped up.

**[INCOMING CALL]**

**[LOCATION: ERROR: UNKNOWN SIGNAL]**

**[IDENT: T'SONI, LIARA]**

"...Huh," Jack exclaimed. "Can't say she doesn't stay on top of things."

* * *

The comm's buzz was jarringly loud, given the office's acoustics. Still, the man with the golden eyes showed nothing but restrained satisfaction as he stood and picked up the comm receiver. "That would be them now, Commander Alenko. If you'll excuse me for a moment, I need to debrief."

"Certainly." Kaidan allowed himself to sit back and relax a little in his chair as the man put the comm to his ear, striding off towards the other end of the office. He watched the lab coat sway and ripple from side to side, its bleached white a stark contrast to the features of the huge window in front of the man (it was 'night' on the Presidium, and even darker out there than in the office). The commander's eyes narrowed as he tried to listen to as much of the conversation as he could. It paid to be well-informed, after all.

"I'm listening," the man said by way of greeting.

The silence that followed was practically audible. Kaidan could swear he felt the temperature in the room drop by a few degrees.

"...I see." It was a neutral tone, but very deliberately so. Very deliberately indeed; somehow the effect was more threatening than if he'd simply become angry. "And Twelve? What was the extent of the damage?" The man listened for a moment. "Good. As long as she's stabilized, fall back to the Citadel and get her back up to operational capacity while you're en route. We'll regroup for the second attempt." He hung up abruptly and turned, stiffly pacing back to the desk.

The commander raised an eyebrow. "Trouble? That didn't sound like it went as planned."

"Only a setback, Commander Alenko," the man responded, his voice devoid of its earlier semblance of warmth. "The fortunate thing about setbacks, Commander, is that they are by no means permanent – that's what contingency plans are for." He pushed the chair back under his end of the desk. "Come. We need to get started right away."

"To execute the backup plan, sir?"

"Technically, I executed the backup plan yesterday, in case something like this happened," responded Kaidan's temporary charge. "Most of it will move independently of our actions at the moment...we simply need to manage some of the details."

He opened the door to the office and was bathed in the light of the hallway outside, highlighting his tall, slender frame like some painted archon of mythologies long since past.

"There is no need for worry, Commander. Subject Zero may run all she likes, but _by no means_ can she hide from me."


	5. Omnos

Mass Effect is the property of Bioware.

Well, it certainly has been a long few months. Unfortunately, my laptop began to have some serious problems in late December, and eventually gave out altogether. Several frustrating months and over a thousand dollars later, however, I am back and can resume regular updates. Thank you for bearing with me.

* * *

An inextricable running theme throughout Jack's (admittedly short) life so far: Nothing ever went right.

The bank job back on Aegis had degenerated into a twelve-way Mexican standoff that resulted in her entire running crew dead, the shipjacking over Arcturus had gotten her thrown into Purgatory, killing her attackers in Purgatory had gotten her locked down in cryo, getting off that godforsaken prison ship had dropped her onto a Cerberus vessel in the midst of a suicide mission, and finishing the mission in question had just led to a Kasumi cockblock and _another_ on-the-run situation. One in which she was way, way over her head, judging from what had just happened in Audacity.

She pulled a syringe from a pouch on her belt, checked it just to be sure. Seeing that it was still filled with the familiar gray gleam of medigel, the convict tapped a bubble out of the syringe and slid the needle into her side, close to the sharp pain in her ribs. The sensation was cool, and a little relaxing – cold comfort next to the pain, but Jack would take what she could get.

Kasumi, in the meantime, had taken the liberty of answering the call from Liara T'Soni. She kept her communicator set to 'audio only', making sure that there were no projections of the asari's image within the cab. This was...perhaps a bit paranoid, as they were moving through the air with enough speed to be very difficult to track indeed, but considering everything that had happened in the previous day, no one in the cab had any objections whatsoever. "Kasumi here. We're alone; what've you got for us?"

"Some urgent news related to your problem with Mr. Hock," came the response. Immediately, all three leaned in to listen more closely – Liara's voice was nearly drowned out by some kind of whirring in the background. Probably a set of hard drives, Jack reasoned. Information brokers tended to have a ton of networked terminals, after all. All the better to store the data they collected. "You might have to scrap the plan altogether. It looks like he's traveling to the Citadel tomorrow, and he'll be meeting with someone from the Alliance to sell that graybox."

Kasumi's shoulders slumped with the weight of anticipated despair, and it was quiet in the cab for an uncomfortably long moment. Finally: "He's cracked it?"

"I'm almost positive he hasn't. Hock's transmissions are claiming he has data that could potentially embarrass the Alliance, but he doesn't drop a single clue as to what it could be. If I had to make a guess, I'd say that right now the only reason they're entertaining a meeting with him is his status."

"That makes sense," Thane put in. "If you're going to blackmail someone, you need to convince them that the information you have is potentially damaging. He isn't specifying, because he can't - he doesn't know what's in the graybox."

"Right. I don't know what your new plan will be, but you might be interested in hearing that he's holding one of his trademark soirees in two days when he arrives. Sending the details to your omnitool now." Sure enough, the omnitool lit up with a 'message received' indicator. All Kasumi had to do was download the data attachment. "I took the liberty of getting your two partners-in-crime onto the guest list...they're well-known figures in the kind of circles Hock dips his fingers in, so it won't seem suspicious if you show up."

"Thanks," said Kasumi, sounding a touch less ragged from stress. "That ought to help out , at least."

"I've got some more information on events going around the Citadel that might be pertinent, anything you might use to infiltrate the party," the asari added. "Sending it now."

Strangely, this time there was no corresponding notification. "Um..." The thief scratched at the back of her hood. "I'm not getting it."

"That's odd. Feron, where's the supplementary Hock files?"

"Huh? They're right there," came the voice of Liara's drell assistant, the one they'd met at the office. He sounded distant, off in the background somewhere. "I gave them to the drone so it could transfer them to your—

"I delete data like that on the way to real errors," announced a familiar voice.

"_Feron_!"

"It's not my fault!" Feron protested. "I didn't know the VI would...hold on, I'll try to run a recovery process."

Liara's voice was now tinged with more than a little frustration. "I'm sorry about that, Ms. Goto. I'll get the extra files to you as soon as possible. In the meantime, do you have transportation?"

At last, Jack spoke up. "To the apartment? No, we can't go back there, the jackoffs that blew up Audacity are probably watching it-"

"We have transportation arranged to the Citadel, yes," Thane broke in. "We'll relocate immediately. Thank you for your assistance, Dr. T'Soni."

"Of course. Liara out."

Jack stared as Kasumi put the comm away. He had just...all right, so it was kind of a dumbass move on her part to assume Liara hadn't been talking about the Citadel, but Thane had just taken this in stride and decided they were headed there anyway. And Citadel visits were always a pain; you had to get through customs and security, and you had to deal with C-Sec, and who knew how long they'd be there tying up Kasumi's loose ends now, when all they'd previously had to do was go blow up some villa in Bekenstein.

Thane glanced over to her. "Jack, if you would, please tell your associate that we could make use of that ship he offered us now. The sooner we leave, the better, I expect."

And he'd just decided they were going to do it, like it was the most natural thing in the world, not at all like a trip to the Citadel. Like it was the only choice they had. What was so wrong with just letting Kasumi go there and deal with it? She had an opportunity now, so couldn't they cut her loose and-

"_Siha_?" The assassin had leaned forward to peer at her, his eyes tinged with concern. "Are you all right?"

She blinked. Swallowed her frustrations. Making a scene in front of Kasumi would only make _both_ of them think worse of her, and while Jack didn't give a company fuck what the thief thought, Thane was a different story altogether.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'll call and get the docking bay number."

But the look that Jack cast over her companions as she dialed the number was anything but acquiescent.

* * *

Their transportation to the Citadel turned out, unexpectedly, to be a small civilian freighter crewed by more of the silent, masked henchmen from earlier. As far as the group could make out, it didn't even have any weapons. On the one hand, if they got jumped on the way to the Citadel, that could be something of a problem. On the other, it'd make them less suspicious to C-Sec and, if Hock or whoever was chasing Jack was looking for them, an unarmed merchant vessel would probably be the last place they checked.

So it was that they set off for the Citadel, and would hopefully arrive there around the same time Hock did. It wasn't terribly likely (he was coming from Bekenstein, after all, and had something of a head start on them), but as long as they could catch up before the party started, they would be okay.

Well, okay as far as pulling off the 'heist' went.

Jack's room was a standard crew cabin – much less spartan than her Normandy accommodations. Still, that meant less open space to maneuver in if need be, and a few months ago she'd have complained that it left her in closer proximity to the rest of the team and they could now come and annoy her more easily. That was…perhaps not as much of a concern as it had once been.

That does not, dear reader, imply that things were peachy keen between the convict and her 'teammates'. Not even remotely. In fact, the first three hours of the trip were spent pacing around her cabin as she ruminated on the state of affairs between her and Thane…and Kasumi now, she supposed, because this really seemed to have become some kind of three-way relationship at some point, given the amount of time and effort they were expending on someone they barely knew. She wasn't _quite_ insecure enough to think that Thane had romantic designs on the thief, but…

She should go up and talk to him. Draw the line in the sand. Tell him it was her or Kasumi. Wait, no. No, that would be unreasonable. He'd been remarkably insightful so far; as far back as the Normandy, he'd understood things about her that most people didn't – that she didn't need 'saving' being the foremost among them. Maybe, with time, he'd come to realize that he was being neglectful about it…but maybe not. He was only human – well, figuratively speaking. And he hadn't realized it about his wife and son.

Jack flopped down onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling, not quite able to suppress a frustrated growl. Goddammit, this was impossible to decipher. Should she go talk to him about it? What if she only made things worse, overplayed the 'you're dying' card? (People probably didn't like to be reminded of that, after all.) Relationship dynamics were pretty much a total unknown, and Jack didn't take well to unknowns at all. Or new things, which her current situation definitely was. In fact, it was both of those simultaneously, which pretty much spelled 'forbidden territory'.

An illustration: at the beginning of her tenure with the Normandy, she had dabbled in poetry after reading an extranet article that claimed artistic expression was a healthy outlet for frustration and inner turmoil (two things Jack had in spades). She'd painstakingly composed a few free-verse pieces over the course of two weeks, ten days of which had been spent meticulously revising and editing several lines until she felt they had just the right word choice. In the end, to Jack's surprise, it _had_ worked out some frustration; maybe not as much as punching a hole in some dumbass from the Blood Pack would, but she felt a certain catharsis from the act, and (modesty notwithstanding), the finished product had been pretty damned good. After agonizing over whether it was _that_ good for a few minutes, she'd taken the plunge and submitted the best of the lot to Galactic Poetry Monthly.

It came back two days later with a rejection notice. Some shit about 'metered verse'. Feeling personally betrayed on a variety of levels, Jack had sent back a hasty response along the lines of "fuck your metered verse and fuck _you_", destroyed the terminal in a fit of pique, and responded to EDI's subsequent lecture about vandalism to Cerberus property with a warp to the holo projector. She'd never written again.

The incident had served to reinforce what she already knew: new things, if she didn't know she could succeed spectacularly at them on the first try, were something Jack avoided at all costs.

Relationship discussions were one of those 'new things'. Barring their long talk before the Omega-4 relay, she'd never really tried to talk about this kind of thing before, and even that conversation had been a mess – an awkward fumbling in the miserable dark for both of them until they'd finally just given up on words and clung together in the darkness of the cargo hold.

Was the risk of alienating him further worth it, as bad as she knew she was at that kind of thing?

Jack sighed and rolled over onto her side, hugging her knees to her chest. No, if this had been a situation that required her to go out and crack some heads, she'd already have been out the door, but trying to talk about feelings and shit, particularly in light of her frustrations with Thane's fixation on helping Kasumi, was only going to drive the assassin further away from her. She was out of her element. Maybe he'd come to her and talk about it…hell, maybe he'd figure it out on his own, or maybe they'd get done with this thing quickly enough that they could just put the whole incident behind them. But if he didn't…

For the second time that year, Jack gritted her teeth and swore inwardly at the incredible frustration that came from not having the first fucking clue what to do.

The Citadel, at least, was refreshingly familiar territory. It had been a little under a month since the trio had last been there, and was the same bustling space-metropolis, whatever reassurance that might provide. Their freighter docked at the Tayseri keel, leaving its passengers to head out into the station proper and form a plan of attack.

As promised, Liara had provided them with a serviceable hideout on the Citadel and kept up a steady flow of information (no thanks to Feron's bugged Shepard VI), and that intel included a mention of the venue where Donovan Hock's party would take place. It was a lavish hotel in the upper Kithoi ward, the Grand Matriarch, and he would be renting out the ballroom for the night…which suggested this was going to be a fairly small affair (at least by Hock's standards), otherwise he would have used a convention center or something crazy. This was a double-edged sword: while there were less potential complications to worry about, it also meant that any suspicious behavior or individuals would stick out more.

"Well," Kasumi declared, unconsciously imitating the Thinker pose, "getting in will be easy. Getting out…might be a bit more complicated."

The thief had insisted on coming by to 'case' the hotel, which was somewhat redundant in light of the fact that their intel featured a decent set of floor plans. Still, here they were, repeatedly circling the block on which the building sat and memorizing the number of potential entrances to the ground floor.

Jack turned a well-practiced glare on Kasumi. "Look, we're on the guest list." That much was true; she and Thane had invitations, courtesy in equal parts of Liara and their rather fearsome reputations. "We'll keep Hock distracted and watch for the graybox, and you can sneak around and see where he's keeping it. Easy."

"We might even offer to buy it," Thane added, "which could cause him to drop clues to its whereabouts."

"Or shoot us for constantly riding his ass about the graybox," Jack replied, perhaps just a touch harsher than was necessary. She didn't know whether to feel vindicated or guilty over the drell's nonplussed blink – he _did_ look at least a little hurt by her curtness. "Speaking of which, when shit goes down and people start shooting – don't look at me like that, you know it will – what's the plan?"

"Well…" The thief scratched at her chin. "I'm sneaking in with the cloak, so I can bring my Locust, but the two of you…hrm." They left the hotel and began to meander down the street, back in the direction of their temporary hideout. As the trio passed by the Kithoi C-Sec hub, Kasumi spoke up again. "On second thought, they'll probably let you carry pistols in. And you have biotics…"

"And the Eclipse working security," replied Thane, "will have assault weaponry, plus their numeric advantage. There will also be other armed guests who could potentially be a problem, should a firefight break out."

"True. If I could figure out a way to smuggle some weapons in…" She trailed off as they passed the C-Sec hub, as it wouldn't do to be talking about that kind of thing in front of law enforcement. Their path was blocked, however; an elcor, having plodded out of the hub, was taking up the entire sidewalk as he muttered imprecations at the C-Sec officers who had escorted him out.

"Uh…" Kasumi cleared her throat. "Excuse me."

There was no response.

"Sir?"

No response.

"Hey, asshole!" Jack bellowed, one fist lighting up with a biotic sheath. "Clear out or get cleared out, your choice."

"Startled: Bwuh?" The elcor turned to face them, and at last the trio got a glimpse of his face. It was…unremarkable, being an elcor, but their eyes were drawn to something unusual: he wore a pair of red-tinted sunglasses, posed jauntily atop his mouth-flaps. "Frazzled: Oh. I didn't see you there. I was busy cursing the establishment. I'll move on."

Kasumi's eyes widened beneath her hood. "Wait. I know you!" she exclaimed, stepping up closer. "Well, maybe not _you_ per se, but the shades, definitely. You're Nockrick Taur!" To Jack's considerable bewilderment, the thief sounded like a kid on Christmas morning, all bubbly with enthusiasm. "Look, you don't know me – you wouldn't believe me if I told you who I am – but I'm your biggest fan, seriously."

Nockrick blinked. "Surprised: Really?"

"_Yes_, really! That prank where you switched the Crown of Neris with a tub of popcorn-"

"Helpfully: It was a social experiment."

"…right, that _social experiment_ was masterful! And then I saw you on the news the other day and they said you'd infiltrated a performance of Hearts On Breaking Shore and then turned off all the translators."

"Gleefully: And then hit the fire alarms, yes," the elcor replied. "Smugly: I took their technological dependence and turned it on its head. The galaxy will never forget the expressionist _coup d'etat_ that I carried out." He glanced over at the hub, his mouth flaps twitching with agitation. "Annoyed: Of course, the people who protect the establishment didn't see it that way."

As the human and the elcor began walking down the sidewalk, discussing past exploits all the way, Jack turned a confused glance to Thane. "The hell just happened?"

"With Kasumi," the drell replied, "I find it's usually better not to ask questions, _siha_."

"With pompous self-assurance: people underestimate an elcor's ability to move unseen," Nockrick was explaining. "They don't understand that as a man of charisma and panache, I'm capable of social engineering my way into anywhere I want to go. Unabashed grandiloquence: You don't need high-tech breaking and entering equipment when you're as good at blending in as I am."

"Well, it helps to have the equipment," Kasumi mused. "So what's next on your agenda? Got any more capers planned?"

"Deviously: I'm glad you asked. I heard that Donovan Hock, the famous arms trafficker, is coming to the Citadel, and I thought I'd take him down a peg."

Jack nearly tripped over herself.

"Uh…you don't say!" Kasumi's poker face was terrible. She'd get cleaned out in any casino on Illium. Fortunately, the elcor was much too absorbed in the details of his plan to notice. "Was, ah, was there a particular way of doing so that you had in mind?"

Nockrick paused and glanced around surreptitiously before drawing the three of them closer. "With hushed secrecy: I know the company he's going to use to do the catering for his party," he explained. "So I'm going to switch the cake with a different one. It'll be a huge, hollow cake, like the kind that people have at bachelor parties, and he'll be expecting an asari stripper to jump out of it. With great relish: But it won't be an asari stripper. It'll be a LOKI mech I've reprogrammed with a sign around its neck that says 'Smash the military-industrial complex'. He'll be so embarrassed. Risibly: Ha. Ha."

Jack, Thane, and Kasumi shared a glance.

This was big. If Nockrick had a way of getting catering crates in, they could stash weapons in those crates – weapons that would even the odds between them and Hock's security.

The convict's mind raced. Even better, if they could…

"You said it's a hollow cake?" she asked Nockrick.

"Firmly: It is."

"Okay. Okay, I think…" Jack rubbed at the back of her head, right over her implant. A few details were questionable, but she was fairly confident in the plan that had hastily assembled itself within her mind. "I think I have a better idea. Uh…if you're interested in it, I mean."

Thane raised a browridge. "What's the idea?"

She told them.

"Ah…" The assassin shifted uncomfortably. "Are you certain about that?"

"That's pretty high-risk," Kasumi admitted, biting at her lip.

Nockrick's reaction was the polar opposite. "Triumphantly: It's perfect," he droned. "With giddy malice: It's even more appropriate and ironic than my idea was."

The biotic fixed him with an 'are you out of your mind' look. "Yeah, great, I'm glad it's ironic and all, but, uh, if we modify your prank like this-"

"Assertively: It is a social experiment," the elcor insisted.

"-if we modify your _social fucking experiment_, do you think you can still pull it off?"

"With unmitigated pomposity: Of course I can pull it off. I'm Nockrick Taur." Somehow, he managed to look smug despite being from a species with no discernable facial expressions. "Concerned: But we'll need another person, won't we? Unless one of you is going to…"

"No," Jack cut him off, pulling out her comm. "Trust me, I've got that taken care of."

Thane gingerly rested a hand on the convict's shoulder. "_Siha_? Are you sure about this?"

"Positive," she said flatly. "Gonna call in the best favor I've got left."

* * *

The holo of Urdnot Wrex folded its arms, which was a very impressive accomplishment in light of the diminutive, t-rex-like size of krogan arms. "If your timetable's right," he rumbled, "we're going to need to rebuild the fleet quickly, and that won't be easy. Not just because of ships…we'd need to train people to pilot them if we had them. You'd be surprised how many krogan don't know how to work a warship."

"He has a point, Commander," Miranda agreed, lowering her datapad.

Shepard sighed. "You don't have any caches left over from the Rachni Wars? I mean, we can't manufacture enough ships to matter within the time we have…" He ran a hand over his closely-shaven scalp. "Actually…wait. Maybe the geth can help on that front?"

"Geth?" Wrex snorted. "That'll take some explaining."

"It might work, though, as long as we can get them to work together." The Cerberus liason chuckled ruefully. "Granted, we're already going to be jumping through hoops to ensure quarian-geth cooperation, so what's one more step?"

"Miranda's right," Shepard said with a nod. "Wrex, see if you can get a feel for how much the rest of the krogan trust you at this point, if what you tell them about the geth will be taken as fact, and then maybe we can-" He broke off as EDI's hologram popped up. "What's up, EDI?"

"Your presence is required in the CIC to deal with a leave request," the AI announced.

"…Huh. Okay, I'll be right there." The commander rose and hurried to the door. "I'll be back for you two in just a minute. See if you can work something out about the geth, think of another source of ships, whatever."

There was exactly thirty minutes of silence in the room after he had left. At last, the krogan spoke up. "Hey. Lawson."

Miranda's gaze flicked up from her datapad. "Yes?"

Wrex leaned forward, a tremendous sense of gravitas filling his eyes.

"Who would win in a fight between you and Shepard?"


End file.
